


Like Starlight Now

by justanothersong



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Christmas, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Mild Language, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:00:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28267257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothersong/pseuds/justanothersong
Summary: Steve chuckled. “Just gonna keep pilin’ up, if I stick around. Gotta get home eventually.”“But baby, you’ll freeze out there,” Bucky teased, words of the song they both knew making each of them smile.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 3
Kudos: 39





	Like Starlight Now

The snow was falling softly over a city that seemed almost silent. The lights of a passing car occasionally lit against the windowpanes, but they were few and far between. Christmas Eve seemed to be a quiet affair all over New York that year, owing mostly to the sudden snowfall that no one had really expected, in spite of what the weatherman kept warning them about on the evening news. For his part, Steve was glad of it; he’d needed the quiet that year. Maybe they all did.

Not Tony, of course. The constant showman, he had arranged a Christmas Eve party that would outdo every last soiree he had thrown. Steve had a standing invitation, and so did Bucky, but it wasn’t the year for it. Not for them, anyway.

That was what had brought Steve out into the snow, shuffling through drifts already ankle-deep, unwilling to take his bike out in the cold and unable to catch a cab any better than he could catch a cold these days. Bucky didn’t live in the Tower. He had needed his own space, someplace that could be a sanctuary from the constant reminders of all he had done, and all that had been done to him. Steve had understood, even if there were a few pangs of sadness in seeing him go. Steve had tried living on his own once, back in D.C., but it hadn’t gone at all well. He found he craved the comradery of taking a place in the Tower, knowing that he could keep to himself if he so chose, or venture out and almost certainly find a friendly face looking for company.

But on nights like this, when strangers poured into the open doors of the Tower, looking for glitz and glamor and a glimpse of their heroes, Steve wanted no part of it. He ached for the quiet of Bucky’s place, the simple apartment not far off from their old neighborhood in Brooklyn. He brushed off the concerns of the others, insisting he wait for a car or stay for the party, and dropped a few gifts in the communal living space upstairs before venturing out. 

The walk was long and his bones ached with the cold, but he had pushed on, knowing the peace he would find at the end of his journey was well worth the discomfort.

Bucky was a rich man these days, with backdated hazard pay and some clever investments overseen by Tony, but you would never know it from the small apartment where he lived. The furniture looked careworn but comfortable; Steve was never sure if that was by design, or if they truly were secondhand pieces. It didn’t matter much to him either way, so long as Bucky was happy. 

The early evening saw them taking up their usual positions in Bucky’s living room after a dinner of frozen pizzas and oven-baked French fries. The others, Steve knew, would have turned up their noses to such fare, but inwardly, Steve and Bucky still marveled at the convenience of it. There was just so _much_ these days; one trip to the grocery store could get you just about anything you wanted, from delicacies flash frozen to be reheated later to produce months out of season but still fresh, and everything in between. 

They had been dumbfounded once, just staring at the piles and piles of all the different kinds of apples on display in a little grocery store down the block from Bucky’s apartment. Steve couldn’t recall if he had even known there were so many varieties in his youth, outside of _red_ for eating and _green_ for his mother’s baked apple crisp. Natasha had been with them, smiling in that gently teasing way she had, but they hadn’t been bothered. The world was so big now. It still took some getting used to.

Steve had been surprised to see that Bucky had put up a tree, a small plastic thing, not even three feet tall, with bright multicolor lights already woven among the artificial branches. The ornaments were mostly plastic baubles, but there were candy canes and wrapped chocolates dangling from golden strings – because it was bad luck, Mrs. Barnes had insisted, not to have something edible on your Christmas tree – and a bright red feathery cardinal clipped on a high branch. Along with the candies on her tree, Mrs. Barnes had always had a bird or two, so far as Steve could recall. The star on top was made of cheap metal and spray-painted with gold and silver glitter, standing crooked off of a spiral base meant to hold it in place.

When he first set eyes on it, Steve thought it was probably the most beautiful tree he had ever seen.

The thought occurred to him again as they sat in companionable silence, mugs of hot chocolate spiked with peppermint schnapps in their hands, and he couldn’t help but smile. It wasn’t perfect, but it was Bucky’s, and it felt like home. That’s all either of them really needed.

“Looks like the snow’s comin’ down pretty hard,” Bucky commented mildly, and Steve nodded with an agreeable hum. The forecast the whole week prior had been for an inch or two, then in the last day it had changed to maybe four to five. Steve was pretty sure there had been at least half a foot on the ground when he started his long walk to Bucky’s place, and more than that by the time he had arrived.

“Gonna be a bitch to get home in this,” he commented, and sighed. Perhaps he should have taken the car that Tony had offered him after all. The thought of venturing back out into that cold made his stomach knot.

“Can’t see how you can get a taxi in this mess,” Bucky added, shaking his head. There was no formalness to his speech now, no vestige of modern influence tainting either his or Steve’s words when they were together like this. Times like these, they were just a couple of fellas from Brooklyn, no audience to impress. “And you ain’t got a good coat for this weather.”

Steve smiled again, unable to help himself. Almost a century had passed since the first time Bucky had frowned at him and stripped off his own scarf to wind around Steve’s neck on a blustery winter day, and still he could act like a mother hen. Steve was no wiry little scrap of a boy any more, but it didn’t seem to matter to Bucky. Knowing that made something warm bloom in Steve’s chest, aching just as much as the cold had pained him on his walk, and he sighed.

“Ain’t exactly gonna blow away in the storm, Buck,” he replied, and took a sip of his hot chocolate, enjoying the burn of the schnapps but wishing, not for the first time, it could settle his mind and dull his senses the way it once had. He may not have been able to get a buzz like he used to, but here, in the quiet of Bucky’s place, he could be the man – the kid – he once was.

Not Captain America. Not even Steve Rogers, no. Not here. Here, he was just Steve. Stevie. That punk kid with a big mouth and an even bigger chip on his thin little shoulder. And there was Bucky, his best pal, the jerk, his… his protector. His _home_.

He took another sip of his hot chocolate, wondering if drinking straight from the schnapps bottle still sitting on the kitchen counter would make a difference. Probably not.

“No, you’re a fuckin’ brick wall these days, punk,” Bucky replied evenly, tone smacking of the unsaid _no shit, Sherlock_. “Don’t mean it won’t be miserable. Can’t fool me, pal. You don’t like goin’ out in the cold anymore’n I do.”

Steve sighed, but said nothing. He had hoped no one would notice that, but he should have known that Bucky of all people would. It wasn’t that he couldn’t take it, because he could – Steve could withstand cold temperatures as well as he could withstand the brutal injuries that he quickly bounced back from or the weight of the gear he’d carry that would cripple a normal man. But it didn’t mean he didn’t _feel_ it… didn’t mean that he didn’t _hate_ it.

The cold cut him to the quick. It didn’t matter how much he bundled himself up, in sweaters and wool coats, thick gloves and thicker scarves; none of it seemed to make a dent in the chill he never seemed to escape. All it took was one breath of frigid air drawn into his lungs, and Steve would feel it all over again, the cold and the snow, the water that wasn’t frozen but still seemed somehow colder than ice, enveloping him, drowning him, until he couldn’t feel his limbs and frozen crystals formed over his eyes to obscure his view. Each breath was like drawing in a thousand sharp little pins made of pure ice, prickling and stabbing at his throat and lungs, only to be exhaled and start all over again.

It was hell, pure and simple. He remembered the days of catechism, with Father Monahan or Sister Imogene standing at the head of the class, telling them tales of fiery torment that would await anyone who wouldn’t repent the sins they most assuredly would commit during their wicked little lives. Hellfire and brimstone had always been the order of the day, but Steve knew now that they had been wrong. Hell, if there was such a place, wasn’t full of flames. It was ice, pure frigid ice from which you could never escape. He knew it down to his bones.

“Buck…” Steve started, but trailed off. What was he going to do? Deny it? Why bother? Bucky knew him better than that; Bucky _knew_ it better than that, knew the feel of that creeping chill from the days when Hydra would put him under ice while fully conscious, knowing that he could feel the very blood in his veins turning to a frozen slurry. 

Bucky gave a pained smile. “Don’t gotta say a word about it, Stevie,” he said, pausing to take a long drink from his own mug, eyes closing at the sensation of the sweet warm liquid passing his lips. He swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then sighed. “Kinda makes you wonder, sometimes. Both of us goin’ through hell to wind up so far from home like this.”

“This _is_ home,” Steve told him, and Bucky gave another of those sad smiles.

“What, Brooklyn?” he asked, and shook his head. “Same spot on the map, maybe. But it ain’t home Steve. Hasn’t been, for a long time.”

“No, Bucky, _this_ ,” Steve pressed, trying to make the other man understand. He gestured back and forth between them. “This, Buck. This is home.” Bucky smiled again, but it had lost that tinge of bitterness, and it made Steve smile in return as they slipped again into their silence.

Steve hoped that Bucky knew what he meant. Home wasn’t a place anymore – couldn’t be, not with the way the world had changed, moved on without them. It didn’t _need_ to be a place. It just needed to be them, the quiet, the history there, the words between them often left unspoken. 

Moments like this, Steve didn’t have to be _on_. There were no cameras to smile for, no troops to command, the fate of a thousands lives and livelihoods slipping from his shoulders with the sweet relief that Atlas might have felt should he ever lay down his burden. 

Even as much as he loved his found family, Steve never felt completely himself around them. They had expectations, ideas of what sort of man he should be. Steve couldn’t blame them for that, not really. Tony had grown up with Howard filling his head up with stories of the great Captain America, the propaganda figure that had served to win public favor during the war used to give Howard’s young son something to aspire towards. Comic books, films, badly told histories in textbooks full of other well-meaning lies… it had changed who Steve was, sanitized him for the public. 

He tried to live up to the image, tried to be the man they wanted him to be. Fair. Kind. Those parts weren’t so hard; the legend had gotten its start somewhere, after all. Polite. _Good_. That’s where it got a little harder.

Steve was human. He swore like a truck driver if the occasion called for it. He had a short temper, could be terribly myopic when he thought he was right. He got angry. He could be rude or mean without thinking, just like anybody else. He could be jealous, feel sorry for himself. He could _want_ things, things he wasn’t allowed to have. Things he had _never_ been allowed to have.

He was human.

Sometimes, it seemed Bucky was the only one who could see that. Steve would thank God for that, if it didn’t make him feel like such an asshole. To be happy that Bucky was here with him, now. To be pleased that the decades that had passed while he slept under the ice had seen Bucky tortured, broken down and beaten into something new, a living weapon, just so long as it meant that one day Steve would have him by his side again. He never felt so much like the lousy shit he could be then when he found himself feeling so grateful that Bucky was there.

He should have wished his friend was resting in peace now, enjoying some paradise in the hereafter, if it would spare him all that pain.

But Steve was human. And he could be selfish, sometimes.

“Why don’t you shut down that brain of yours for a while?” Bucky said, startling Steve out of his train of thought. He glanced to see Bucky relaxed into his armchair, empty mug discarded on a side table, head lolling back against the cushions and watching Steve with a knowing half-smile.

“That obvious?” Steve asked, and sighed. He drained his own mug and set it on the coffee table, hunching forward in his seat on the couch. “S’pose I’d better head out soon.”

“You’re crazy if you’re thinkin’ about going back out into that mess,” Bucky told him, folding his hands over his midsection. His chair, a rocking recliner, moved gently side to side with the motion of one foot on the ground, the other leg crossed over his knee. “Gotta be a foot an’a half by now.”

Steve chuckled. “Just gonna keep pilin’ up, if I stick around. Gotta get home eventually.”

“But baby, you’ll freeze out there,” Bucky teased, words of the song they both knew making each of them smile. It hadn’t been popular yet in their day, but they had both seen it performed just as the war was beginning. Bucky had gotten a job as a waiter for some fancy party at the Navarro Hotel, and had convinced the catering manager that Steve could work just as hard, in spite of his size. It had put a few extra dollars in their pockets, and they had been treated to a few songs from the performers there. 

Hearing it on the holiday radio stations so many years later had taken them both back to those early days, when the worry and weight of the ensuing days seemed almost unimaginable. 

“Don’t go tryin’ to carry a tune now, Buck, we both know it won’t stick,” Steve told him with a chuckle, pleased that Bucky laughed right alongside him.

“Hey, I’m bein’ serious,” Bucky replied, nodding towards the window. The snow was falling fast; it had been some time since New York had seen a snowfall like this. It wouldn’t surprise either of them if the news was calling it a blizzard by morning. “No point in trying to head out into that mess. You’ll never get a cab and I sure as hell ain’t lettin’ you walk. Just stay here and wait for the plows to dig us out in the morning.”

The smile slipped from Steve’s face and Bucky spoke, eyes dropping to stare at the floor and his socked feet on the carpet, the bottoms of his jeans still soaked and caked with salt from his walk over. It was tempting, staying put. Camping out on Bucky’s sofa, maybe, under the lights of his little tree, with the cozy warmth of the flannel blanket he kept thrown over the back for just such occasions. It would be nice to wake up here on Christmas morning and pretend it was the norm, pretend it was the days of empty cupboards and broken radiators, huddled together beneath every blanket in the flat and celebrating Christmas by passing a bottle of cheap whiskey back and forth.

But those were different days, different men. Boys still, in spite of their age, clinging to their friendship like a lifeline in a world gone topsy turvy. Days when everyone was still working at just getting by, and didn’t have to worry about what the rest of the world might thing. When Steve was just Steve, not an icon. _Good_ didn’t mean much then; certainly didn’t mean what it did now.

There were already whispers.

He took a deep breath. “Y’know what… what people’ll say. Even Nat, I mean she teases but sometimes I think she doesn’t… You know what they’ll say.”

Bucky cocked his head to the side, seeming to study him there in the light of the little Christmas tree. He was thinking about it, Steve thought, maybe weighing the consequences. What people might think. What Bucky might say.

Then he sighed. “What, Stevie? That we’re queer?”

“Bucky,” Steve admonished, a quiet sort of pleading in his voice. They’d both heard the rumors, heard the teasing; they’d never talked about it before.

“Hey now, _Cap_ , that ain’t a bad word these days,” Bucky pointed out, clearly mistaking Steve’s response as an attempt to scold him for his language. “I’m not up on all the lingo and whatnot, but from what I understand, that’s somethin’ people call themselves. On purpose, even.”

Steve took a deep breath. “Not what I meant,” he said. His fingers dug into the knit lining of the sofa without him even realizing it, gripping tightly.

Bucky shrugged. “I know what people think,” he said. “Same thing people always say. Same thing they said back in the day.”

Steve glanced towards him sharply. “What?” he asked, eyes wide in surprise.

Bucky laughed; it sounded a little hollow. “What, did the great _Captain America_ never hear about that one?” he asked, shaking his head. “All the fellas used to talk. ‘I heard they lived together’ over mess. ‘I heard Cap only enlisted to follow Barnes’ over campfires. ‘What kind of fella leaves his girl to run off on a suicide mission to find a guy as good as dead anyhow?’ when you came marchin’ back with all of us in tow. Ain’t new, Stevie. Don’t see why it’d bother you now.”

Steve was shellshocked; a few moments passed before he could respond, though it seemed not to bother Bucky at all. He simply relaxed back into his seat, went back to rocking himself on one foot with the same awkward rhythm. Like he hadn’t just said all of that, like he hadn’t just unloaded years of secret innuendo as though it were nothing at all.

“Don’t call me that,” Steve finally spoke up. He hated when people used the title in that tone; hated it all the more when it was Bucky who did it. 

“Sorry,” Bucky mumbled, but said nothing more.

Steve sighed. “Buck, did people really say that? Back then?” he asked cautiously. He hadn’t heard any such rumors, but things had been different in those days. The men treated him differently. With the others, with the team, Steve was on equal footing; they all had their strengths, no one man – or woman – any better than any others. But back in the service, rank held much more importance than it did now. The men wouldn’t have let such rumors reach his ears if they could help it.

“Yeah,” Bucky admitted, and sighed himself. “Nothin’ doin’. Wasn’t the only load of garbage they’d make up about people, was it? An army doesn’t march on its stomach so much as it marches on the fuckin’ rumors that crop up. Gives the men something to whisper about in the trenches. Me an’ you, they didn’t get it. So they talked shit, that’s all.”

Steve frowned, a thousand unanswered questions burning in his mind. “Did… did Peg—” he began.

“Peggy Carter knew you had more love for her than you had sense in your head,” Bucky said, cutting him off and wagging a metal finger at him as he spoke. “Don’t you go thinkin’ you did anything to hurt Peg. She knew where she stood with you. Any fool with eyes could have seen that you worshipped the ground she walked on.”

 _Any fool with eyes_. Well. 

Steve swallowed thickly. “Yeah?” he asked. “Could you see that, Buck?”

The smile on Bucky’s face was sadder than it had any right to be. “Any fool with eyes, Stevie,” he said, shaking his head. “Was glad for it, too. Wanted you to have that, have something good. Something normal.”

That was it, really. Steve closed his eyes and tipped his head forward, hunching in on himself as though willing himself to be small and slight again. Wanting to be the man he was once again, the man he had been born to be, at least for a moment or two.

“What if,” Steve began, then swallowed again, forcing himself to take a breath. “What if normal wasn’t what I really wanted? What if normal was just a consolation prize for a sad sack who couldn’t get what he really wanted?”

“Steve…” Bucky began, something like alarm in his voice, chair creaking as though he were sitting forward.

Steve shook his head, eyes still shut tight. “I loved Peggy, Buck, don’t doubt that. Don’t doubt that for a second. But it ain’t always that simple, it… lovin’ one person doesn’t make you stop lovin’ another. Especially when you can’t have… when you think you’re not allowed…”

“I wanted you to have that,” Bucky replied carefully, after a beat. “I wanted you to have somethin’ normal, Stevie, cos I knew I never could.”

Steve opened his eyes, brilliant blue and sparkling with tears threatening to spill over lashes to thick and lovely for Bucky not to have noticed a thousand times over the years. He smiled at the thought of it, at the memory of the first time he looked at Steve, his Stevie, and thought of what a sucker he was for those eyes. 

Bucky gave a short, self-deprecating laugh. “Nothin’ you need to be concerned with, though. S’my problem to deal with.”

“Did you not listen to what I’m tryin’ to tell you here?” Steve asked, clearly pained. They were on the precipice of something here, something they had danced around for years. Something they had breathed back into life the moment their eyes met on that damn bridge and the distance of the decades that had passed had crumbled away to nothing.

Bucky’s chair stopped rocking. His face had flushed, red with emotion or embarrassment, Steve couldn’t tell which. He leaned forward in his seat and clasped his hands in front of himself.

“Always thought there was something wrong with me,” Bucky said slowly. He was staring at the tree, unable to meet Steve’s gaze as he spoke. “Thought I was broken.”

“You’re not broken,” Steve said quickly, and Bucky shook his head.

“You sure about that?” he asked, and gave another dark laugh. “Tried to wrap my brain around it. Tried to figure out how I could fix it. Went to the priest once, even, right after Confirmation. Told him my head wasn’t screwed on straight and I couldn’t stop myself thinkin’ of how much better it’d be if you’d been born a girl, or I had. Then I wouldn’t feel like I was crazy all the time.”

Steve’s mouth dropped open and he stared. They hadn’t had many secrets between them over the years, or so Steve had thought. The things he felt inside, those had been his alone, and Steve didn’t think he could ever share them, so they shouldn’t count. But this…

“Father Monahan?” he asked, voice almost croaking. “What’d… what did he say?”

Bucky snorted. “He boxed my ears and told me that you were a good boy, and he wouldn’t see me dragging you down with all the things that were broken inside me. Had me polishin’ the parish silver for the next month for penance too.”

“Son of a bitch,” Steve breathed, shaking his head incredulously. “You said you broke a window at the rectory and that’s why you had to do that!”

Bucky shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you the truth, now could I?”

“You could have!” Steve replied, tone almost accusing. His mind was spinning, a lifetime of memories suddenly seen with brand new eyes. “You could have told me, we could have…”

“What? What, Steve?” Bucky replied sharply. “I coulda hurt you, made your Ma hate me, hate us both? Could have pushed you into something you didn’t… and you would have, too, for me. I know you would have done anything I asked, I couldn’t put this… I couldn’t put my problem on you.”

“Ma wouldn’t have hated either of us,” Steve said in a small, petulant voice.

“You don’t know that,” Bucky told him. “Look around, Steve. There are still more’n enough people out there would just as soon as spit on me as say hello if they… if I…”

“I wouldn’t,” Steve replied, shaking his head. “Isn’t that all that should matter?”

“What, you want me to run out, find some… find some guy, parade him around at Stark’s parties and all of that crap, pretend like it won’t make a difference in the way people treat me?” Bucky asked incredulously. “Look, as much as people these days like to pretend they’re all open-minded and cool and wear their rainbow t-shirts, just as many of them think just the same way as Father Monahan.”

Steve’s brain had stuttered to a stop at _find some guy_ , mental machinations grinding to a complete halt at the horrific thought of Bucky with anyone. Anyone else.

“Is there… is there a guy, Bucky?” Steve asked faintly.

Bucky laughed, falling back into his seat and crossing his arms over his chest. “Oh man, that’d be rich,” he said. “Can you imagine? Half the time I got people still callin’ me a traitor or a terrorist, then to drag some poor idiot into my mess and…”

“Bucky,” Steve said sharply, cutting him off. “Bucky, is there a guy?” He had to know. 

Bucky stared a long moment, something of a challenge in his eyes, before his shoulders slumped and he shook his head. “There’s nobody, Steve,” he relented. “Never has been. Never will be. I’m hopeless, okay? There, have your little ego boost, knowin’ how fucked up I am. It’s just been you. It’s always been you.”

He still didn’t understand, Steve realized. The words weren’t easy, they never had been. It had never been blatant, nothing he could speak outright. 

It had never been _stay home with me tonight_ , or _please don’t go to the dance, Bucky_ ; Steve could never bring himself to say the words. It had always been quiet, simple. 

_I’m feelin’ too poorly Buck_ , too sick to be alone. 

Later, now, less obvious, but just as effective: _But it’s cold outside_.

“No more fucked up than I am,” Steve offered, hoping that would be enough, but he could already see Bucky pulling away, drawing back into himself. He hadn’t been one to offer up much of himself without prompting before, when they had both been young and the world hadn’t damaged them yet. Now, since Hydra, it was even worse. “Shit, Bucky, you an’me… it’s… we’re… it’s _home_.”

The surprise and wonder etched across Bucky’s features made it clear that he finally understood, but even that was a crushing blow, that it should be such a shock to him, so difficult for him to believe it. As though Steve hadn’t worn his heart on his sleeve all of his life.

As if he hadn’t turned the world upside down to find Bucky, to save him, to keep him _safe_.

Bucky laughed, a few incredulous chuckles, eyes gone as bright as Steve’s in the glow of the Christmas tree. He pressed his hand to his chest, as though checking to feel his own heartbeat and ensure that this was real, that they were both there and alive, the words spoken between them true. 

“Couple of dunderheads, we are,” Bucky finally spoke, voice full of mirth and something else that Steve couldn’t dare to name.

He thought it would have been different, he realized, when he dared to imagine it. Steve had gotten too attuned to the modern take on romance, with sudden realizations turning into passionate kisses, out in the rain or standing in the surf on some forgotten beach somewhere, all crescendos of music and crashing waves. Instead, there was awkwardness, there was uncertainty; Steve didn’t know what was supposed to happen now.

“Always have been,” Steve told him with a soft chuckle. “Why should a new century change all that?”

The lapsed into silence for a moment, the muted sounds of traffic barely worth notice outside the window; someone was screeching their tires in the snow, someone else hitting a horn and swearing, but it all sounded so far away. The snow kept coming, the wind whipping it past the window to drift upon the sill, two pairs of eyes avoiding each other by watching it fall.

“Still thinkin’ about running out into that storm?” Bucky spoke up quietly, though Steve knew that wasn’t the real question he was asking.

“Seems I’d be a fool to leave this behind,” Steve replied just as softly, noting the small smile his words drew to Bucky’s face.

“Seems that way,” Bucky agreed, then bit his lip. “Could always bunk in with me.”

His words brought a flush to Steve’s cheeks, caught somewhere between embarrassment and burgeoning desire. “Buck, I… I’ve never… with a fella, I don’t know exactly what…” he sputtered out.

Bucky chuckled. “Sleepin’, Rogers, s’all I’m saying. I ain’t that easy,” he said, and they both gave a nervous laugh. He cleared his throat. “Besides, I… uh, what I said, I meant it. There’s never been… I mean, there’ve been girls, y’know, just like I know there’ve been girls for you but I… Stevie…”

Steve nodded, wanting Bucky to know he understood. “Seems like everything important we ever did, we did together,” he offered. “But like you said. Sleepin’ sounds good to me about now.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed, and stood. He reached a moment to turn off the tree and then thought better of it, letting the branches stay lit in the darkened room as he held out a hand to his oldest friend, a silent offer to take another important step together. The long low breath he exhaled when Steve’s strong hand slipped into his own was a mixture of relief and outright giddiness.

They lumbered silently, hand in hand, Steve leading the way; anyone who had known them so long ago would have easily recognized the scene of two rough and tumble boys, one small and wiry and blonde, the other larger and dark and more cautious, off to cause trouble or find adventure somewhere in the imagined wilds of their Brooklyn neighborhood.

This time, though, the adventure would last a lifetime. They were sure of it.


End file.
